Bacterial community composition in low-flowing river water with different sources of pollutants

Abstract Pollution of water resources is a major risk to human health and water quality throughout the world. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of pollutant sources from agricultural activities, urban runoffs, and runoffs from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) on bacterial communities in a low-flowing river. Bacterial community structure was monitored using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) and 16S rRNA gene clone library. The results were analyzed using nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and UniFrac, coupled with principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) to compare diversity, abundance, community structure, and specific functional groups of bacteria in surface water affected by nonpoint sources. From all the sampling points, Bacteria were numerically dominated by three phyla – the Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Cyanobacteria – accounting for the majority of taxa detected. Overall results, using the β diversity measures UniFrac, coupled with PCoA, showed that bacterial contamination of the low-flowing river was not significantly different between agricultural activities and urban runoff.